‘Teacher for a Day’ Energizes Students

I wiggle in my desk chair, softly swiveling it ever so
gently back and forth, and fidget with my pen. I am a student in my own
classroom.
At the front of the room stands a teacher in my place. To outside
observers the girl dressed in flip flops and jeans pointing at things projected
to the white board could not possibly be in charge—if anything they might
mistake her as an unruly student who escaped from the confines of her desk.

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I wiggle in my desk chair, softly swiveling it ever so
gently back and forth, and fidget with my pen. I am a student in my own
classroom.

At the front of the room stands a teacher in my place. To outside
observers the girl dressed in flip flops and jeans pointing at things projected
to the white board could not possibly be in charge—if anything they might
mistake her as an unruly student who escaped from the confines of her desk.

However, to both me and my students, Josie is the teacher
and she is leading a discussion on an article from Upfront magazine that discusses the impact of energy resources.
Like my students, I listen as Josie presents a summary of the article, pointing
out important facts and explaining significant vocabulary.

When the open discourse begins, hands jut into the air as
new ideas arise in students’ minds. Students cite past articles, real life
experiences, television programs and personal views to debate the way we
extract and use energy resources in the United States. At the culmination of
the discussion, Josie reveals her final thoughts on the topic.

This situation is not an anomaly. Instead, it is
a regular part of our classroom that I dubbed “Teacher for a Day.”

I developed the concept by combining the
strategy of reciprocal teaching with a teaching tool, the Reading Response Window,a graphic organizer that requires students
to record and present information about an assigned text.

The response window requires students to provide
the following information about their assigned section of reading: four facts
from the text, three essential vocabulary words, one sketch to remember, two
lingering questions and a statement of their new thinking about the topic.

When participating as Teacher for a Day,
students come to class prepared to use the Reading Response Window as their
guide for teaching their classmates.

Students project the information they’ve
gathered and then begin by summarizing the piece of literature they are presenting.
Once their classmates understand the main idea of the text, students use the
visuals, questions and opinions they have organized to lead the class in a
discussion similar to how a classroom teacher would lead a discussion.

While I originally designed “Teacher for a Day”
to simply create good conversations in language arts class, I quickly found it
promotes thoughtful literacy discussions for various pieces of literature. Literacy
researcher Richard Allington has said thoughtful literacy occurs when we
openly talk about literature rather than using questions with obvious answers. Allington
says in these discussions the participants are more likely to make connections
to other texts, world events and personal experiences. They also evaluate the
author’s purpose.

Teacher for a Day is a strategy that can be adapted to texts
in all subject areas, while still emphasizing student voice. However, we must
remember when we provide this opportunity to students we also bequeath them
with the responsibility of all educators—creating a learning environment that
reveres the multiple roads of knowledge and constructing bridges amongst them
through compassionate
classroom discourse.